Versus Versace Spring/Summer 2017 Show

Quite interestingly, Donatella Versacerevealed in a side revelation today that she is already over see-now-buy-now. “I tried it with Versus four years ago. And I don’t know, pfft!” she said, raising her tanned shoulders in a shrug. “It’s better to keep refreshing your store with little groups of clothes.” Donatella was upbeat in her preview of the collection she was about to show in London, though. Antony Vaccarello—who left Versus for Saint Laurent—has been replaced with a young in-house team, and Donatella is celebrating the 20th anniversary of the launch of the collection by “getting back to my Versus girl. She’s a bad girl, a rebel. She breaks rules.”

With Bella Hadid walking out first in not much more than a black leather jacket and a chunky pair of biker boots, that box was pretty much ticked. Hadid’s sister, Gigi, and her boyfriend, Zayn Malik, were in the front row, creating a buzz around the event, which was held in the cavernous basement of the University of Westminster. In order to reach that young Versus audience—who knows, maybe even studying at the college—Donatella said she had been working to bring the prices down. “The difference between now and the beginning,” she said, “is that there’s a new metal mesh that is made out of aluminum and really light, so we can now use it!”

Donatella mostly showed club-friendly, body-con clothes: tight little dresses, things derived from army surplus, pieces with sport-mesh inserts, an exaggeratedly cropped MA-1 jacket. She saved the best for last, though, with the silver chain mail. It whooshed from the sides of a little black dress, dangled as a long, drapey earring. More subtly, it was also inserted into the rips in a denim jacket and jeans—a little flash of brilliance.